Secondary Dominants at Your Fingertips – Piano Course

This course is all about internalizing a sound – a sound that turns heads and shows up across the musical spectrum in songs by Nina Simone, Queen, Ray LaMontagne, Sam Smith, Bright Eyes, and The Beatles to name just a few... For being such a slick harmonic move, this sound I'm describing has a pretty dorky name: secondary dominants.

What are secondary dominants? Well, in a nutshell, they're dominant chords that reach just beyond the diatonic notes of the home key to create a little extra tension so that when they resolve to their diatonic destination, there's a really strong sense of resolution. So instead of just going from one to six for example, you could go from one to the secondary dominant of six (aka V7/vi) and then land decisively on six. Not only that, you can mix in stepwise bass motion, diminished passing chords (free lesson here), and other embellishments to create chord changes and passing sequences that are like candy to the ears.

In this course we look at everything mentioned above by first starting with simple triadic analyses of basic progressions and ending with in-depth studies of the three etudes that I wrote specifically for this course (which you can hear above). Even if parts of the etudes are technically out of reach for you, you'll still be able to understand the core harmonic moves and play along with basic versions that I teach along the way.

Basically, as long as you have a handle of triads and understand what it takes to build a dominant seventh chord (don't worry, I offer a refresher in the course), then you're ready to dive right in! With five hours of video lessons featuring live whiteboards, an overhead camera and a teacher shot, you'll have everything you need to play along with me and absorb these concepts as I demonstrate them from various angles and in numerous different keys. Gumroad also keeps track of your video progress and allows you to adjust the speed as you learn.

That said, if you'd prefer to start with a simpler course, you might enjoy Practicing the Circle of 5ths. This course looks at the circle as a practice tool for all of the basic triads via simple exercises and embellishments appropriate for late beginners to intermediate pianists.

As always, feel free to reach out with any questions over at yesbergerplease.com